Candide cameras.(51st Venice Biennale commentary)

"All's for the best in this best of all possible worlds."

--from Leonard Bernstein's Candide (1956)

In 1956, when Eisenhower's America was perhaps at its most optimistic, Leonard Bernstein puckishly premiered his opera Candide on Broadway. A collaboration between the composer, playwright Lillian Hellman (book), and poet Richard Wilbur (lyrics), the work celebrates the stinging satire of Voltaire's 1759 novella. To the accompaniment of Bernstein's sprightly score, Candide's philosophically inclined tutor, Pangloss, puts forward the notion to his pupil that the world as it ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.